Constitutional Goods

Alan Brudner

Argues for a liberal consensus on the fundamental goals of constitutional order

Challenges the prevailing view that the liberal state must be neutral towards conceptions of the good life and ideals of personality

Draws from the constitutional law of liberal democracies including the United Kingdom, the US, Canada, Germany, South Africa, and India

Constitutional Goods

Alan Brudner

Description

In Constitutional Goods, Alan Brudner distills the essentials of liberal constitutionalism from the jurisprudence and practice of contemporary liberal-democratic states, and argues that the model liberal-democratic constitution is best understood as a unity of three constitutional frameworks: libertarian, egalitarian, and communitarian. Each of these has a particular conception of public reason. Brudner criticizes each of these frameworks insofar as its organizing conception claims to be fundamental, and moves forward to suggest a Hegelian conception of public reason within which each framework is contained as a constituent element of a whole.

When viewed in this light, the liberal constitution embodies a surprising synthesis. It reconciles a commitment
to individual liberty and freedom of conscience with the perfectionist idea that the state ought to cultivate a type of personality whose fundamental ends are the goods essential to dignity. Such a reconciliation, the author suggests, may attract competing liberalisms to a consensus on an inclusive conception of public reason under which political authority is validated for those who share a confidence in the individual's inviolable worth.